[BOOK ONE] When hunter-gatherer Adele Shepherd comes across an injured werewolf in the woods, it's up to her to take him in and save his life: in a remote town dedicated to killing the creatures, she's the only one left who wants to help no matter t...
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THE STORM RAGED with a bitter twist, a frozen wind slicing through the forest on its destructive path through the snowy trees. Mighty thunder boomed overhead, so loud that it felt as though it was crashing directly overhead, shaking the cabin to its core. The crash was muffled down in the bunker, shielded from the angry tempest and the flashes of lightning that illuminated the sky for a split second. Torrential rain torpedoed the windows, smashing into the wood and bending the branches of trees that sheltered the roof.
Time stood still. Every cliché of shock rang true: the deafening thump of Adele's heartbeat in her ears; the lead that weighed down her limbs, pinning her to the ground; the slow motion that pulled her out of the moment as though she was a spectator of her own life. A cold sweat took over, her clammy hands shaking as she tried to take in what she had just heard. The words had come out of her own mouth but they didn't feel real: someone had played a joke on her. Ainslie was just messing with her, she was sure of it, but she couldn't seem to open her mouth to ask.
All she could do was stare. She stared at the scan, at her grandmother's writing, at the tremble in her fingers. Ainslie moved: she stood and crossed the room, but her footsteps made no noise. Adele felt as though she existed in a vacuum, a bubble that separated her from reality by a thin membrane that she could burst, if only she could bring herself to move.
She watched as Ainslie pulled down a new handful of notebooks. She could feel Caleb's arm around her but his touch didn't really feel like his; she wasn't comforted by his hand on her arm, which only served to make her feel even more distanced from herself. Some kind of out of body experience, she thought. Some kind of horrible joke her body was playing on her, a terrifying reaction to the realisation.
Caleb squeezed her arm. He shook her. He sat right in front of her, his eyes boring a hole through the bubble that burst with a gasp. Adele's hand flew to her chest, heaving in a deep breath as though she had been starved of oxygen and when Caleb realised her had got through to her, he held her tight, pulling her away from the wall. She was shaking, quivering as though she had been trapped out in the snow; she could feel her racing heartbeat in her knees.
